From the Desk of Mike

A place for the all the random, non-video game related things in my life.

[thehubby]

My sleep deprived dream brain decided to invent a youtuber/jackass/whatever person and came up with someone who literally does not exist according to the internet.

I've decided to simply accept that this guy is real.Despite what the world tells me.

[thehubby]

Justice for Jake Brogels.

[thehubby]

My sleep deprived dream brain decided to invent a youtuber/jackass/whatever person and came up with someone who literally does not exist according to the internet.

I've decided to simply accept that this guy is real.Despite what the world tells me.

[thehubby]

We learn more from mistakes than from successes. What was supposed to be a template for the Kisenian Blossom turned into an important lesson about attaching petals too soon. And now I have the perfect centerpiece if the theme if "flowers kept a bit too long."

[stage-99-games]

Introducing: Our Horror Story

Hello there, it's been a while. Quite a while, in fact. Many things have happened since the release of Nitro/Carbon a couple of years ago. I gpt degrees from college. Got a job. Got busy. Got blind. But I am pleased to announce that in the midst of all this, I have completed my next game and it is ready for release. No, it's not one of the half dozen games I was already working on, it's something entirely new because that's the way inspiration goes sometimes. I am pleased to introduce to you Our Horror Story.

Our Horror Story is currently available from my games page at Itch,io (link here), and it should within the next few days show up on DriveThruRPG (link here) as well. They have thi review process they go through nefpre anything can go on the website.

Simply put, Our Horror Story is a collaborative storytelling game. You and any number of fellow gameplayers gather around and use randomly assigned prompts to tell a horror story together. Prompts have values assigned based on the perceived difficulty of working them into the story; the higher the value of the prompt, the more it's worth when you bid to be the next person to add to the story. Blood might only be worth 2 in bidding while Crib might be worth 8. Didn't make it in this round? That's okay, take a breath and take a token -- a little trinket worth extra points during bidding. If you successfully add to the story, you lose all your tokens, so every time you're edged out in making an addition, you're closer to working your way back in.

Not sure whether you want to focus on the terrorized or the terror that stalks them? We take care of that for you. Each player can be randomly assigned a Role at the start of the game. These help guide the player's actions and how they tell the story. They're kept secret until the player decides to reveal their Rp;e and take appropriate action. And every Role has a grand purpose. The Killer instills fear in those being pursued, Survivors work to find a way out in the best interests of the story, and Victims...die. That sounds like a bad thing, but it's not. Victims are the backbone of any good horror story, and here they get to shine, for Victims get to choose and narrate their own method of death, making it as grisly, ironic or tragic as they like. And because they are Victims based on role assignment at the start of the game and not the result of some dice roll in the middle, dying is not a sign of failure as it might be in some other role-playing games. It's a huge opportunity for success.

Events are included to change up the rules and tone of the game as they get revealed. Like Roles and most of the rest of the game, they are optional.

And if your group is having a hard time coming up with an idea to kickstart, we have you covered there. Included are five 1-page Story Settings written by our very own @docholligay. You want to be hunted in the woods, killed by your inherited house, or tormented by beings from another dimension? She's all over that.

Also included in the book are tips on how to play the game and varuous characters, houserules and suggestions, and even some of my own personal philosophy on gaming as a storytelling medium. Because artwork is an important element in bringing in some players, it features a great cover by Tumblr and Instagram artist @cammy-jayyy.

And the best part? Like all my other games, it's free. I'm not here to make a ton of money, I'm here to make games that hopefully some folks out there enjoy at least a little bit as much as the many I've enjoyed, myself. If you read this far, then thanks for your attention and may the best stories be yours.

[thehubby]

For those of you who don't follow my rarely used game publishing account! Free game! With material from @docholligay! And now, I return to packing for Blind Camp.

[thehubby]

There's nothing wrong with being the Mott the Hoople of your creative realm.

[thehubby]

Feel free to ignore this if it's at all presumptuous, but would you at all be interested in either suggestions of good audiobook productions, specific genre books that your followers may have enjoyed, and/or favorite audiobook narrators? I feel like you aren't at all new to audiobooks, so I could see how it's a presumptuous ask tho XD

This is a very considerate question, without obligation to answer which is even better. But I will answer because it's a good question and something I have been thinking about. I do welcome suggestions on this matter. As it so happens, I am actually quite a novice at audiobooks; I've only ever listened to one, because I couldn't find enough "sit down with a book" time to get it read in time for a book club. Obviously, I have a lot less "sit down with a book" time now.

Please bear in mind that I have no idea when I would get to read any suggetions that come across -- I have one I need to listen to for Doc's July bookclub and once the floodgates open, I'm sure I'll have other suggestions from the family (I'm still negotiating a reading exchange with someone which will probably have me reading something half again as long as War and Peace), but I will take them all into consideration!

[thehubby]

I know this is going to come as a shock to some of you, but the recommended mode of making pastries is not "significant visual impairment."

[thehubby]

No idea why my crazy blind brain decided to have dreams in which it was determined through a series of tattoos that the new "Live, Laugh, Love" was "Fight, Drink, Screw" but welcome ro 2026, I guess.

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

[yaketysmax]

here is the art energy i’m wanting! and why i call my stuff eyecrimes. draw it! post it! enjoy! be freeeeeeeeeee!

[thehubby]

And don't let yourself be held back by choice of art medium. I've made some damn fine wordcrimes in my time and I will make more. My game design can be occasionally described as a braincrime. I am sure a few of you out there can put up a solid earcrime.

You nosecrime people...well, do your own thing, just do it a little bit further away, okay?

[thehubby]

**POSITION FILLED*

** I'm leaving this post up for posterity and record keeping, but I have been contacted by an artist that I am now working with. ** ** Further editing the post to remove all traces of the word [redacted] since it still appears to be triggering folks to contact me and I don't want them to spend valuable time chasing a dead end.]

I'm looking for a [redacted] to provide the cover for my next (short) role-playing game system to be published on Itch.io and DriveThruRPG. Even before going legally blind, I was not great at art (as you can see here), and I decline to use AI for this purpose. I could publish without cover art, but that feels sloppy and will significantly reduce the odds of anyone ever reading the game, much less playing it.

I can offer you a small, appropriate cash fee for the work or work in kind, such as shipped homemade croissants (my clay flowers do not ship well, and I'm not allowed to ship homemade wine or mead at all, so).

If interested, here are basics, we can discuss details privately:

Non-commercial piece; the game is being released for free, but you must be okay with a perpetual license for that purpose

You will be credited by name (and site or e-mail) in the game

Single piece, dimensions (not necessarily size) of 8.5" x 11" paper

No persons or creatures needed, only objects and environment

Any medium, though markers, watercolor or colored pencil would be especially appropriate

I have some ideas for the cover, but am open to your vision

[thehubby]

I hope to have something more concrete (i.e., a game) to offer the public in a day or two, but just as a point of conversation, more and more I realize that dice, cards, and other randomizers in role-playing games were in large part a mistake. And while this is something I've been thinking about for a while, going legally blind recently certainly doesn't oppose the view. (Traditional dice are ableist; there, I said it.)

At the root of RPGs is the desire for players to tell stories (this is a fundamental change from their ancestors, wargames). And at the root of dice rolls, probability tables, and math in RPGs is a system designed to decide your stories for you. As players, we know, or like to think we know, what is best for the story. Why do I need the dice to tell me if I opened a chest successfully, or managed to dodge an arrow? At what point was it better to surrender the power of our narration to uninterested and uninvolved tools of fate?

It's true that some players, like some writers, have difficulty separating their desires from what is best for the story. But the answer to this should lie with helping those persons to balance their id wth that of the group, not instituting arbitrary manacles for the action of everyone else. I, personally, am tired of game systems telling me and my players what we cannot do (and I say that as someone who has designed games that use dice for success, so at times I have been part of the problem).

"Rule of Cool" is not an answer, either; it is an acknowledgement that we are sometimes confident enough in our choice being good enough for the story to ignore the determination of a system that has all the emotive and narrative flair of an AI chatbot. The "Rule of Cool" override should not be an exceptional occurrence, it should be the norm. Players should be replte with confidence in their decisions and the impacts for the story, with the "system" being available in the exceptional cases where there is uncertainty.

We can all be better storytellers. It starts with not letting inanimate objects tell us what our story is.

[thehubby]

Putting together an appropriately anime-themed running list for our beer run on Saturday, and while this doesn't quite work for that, I would be remiss if I didn't remind the world of one of the weirdest, catchiest ending sequences of all time.

[thedman0310]

Do they know?

[thehubby]

This guy, Lou Wilson, is in fact, super normal to women from all appearances. He did this car up as part of a challenge for Game Changer, as can be seen in this clip here.

[thehubby]

Hey how you been??

I've been surprisingly okay! After my brush with eye problems and a stay in the hospital I...went effectively blind in one eye. Which is challenging in all sorts of simple ways (you think pouring wine into a glass is easy, oh ho ho...), but I've still got one good eye, and that's all I need to wash dishes, wrestle with Midge, and review taxes. Speaking of which, though the tax season is every bit as busy as I expected, there's only about two and a half weeks left to endure.

I have follow up visits with neurology and ophthalmology in the next month to see what they say, but given that I've has no improvements to my vision in the past three weeks or so, I expect where I am to be permanent. Then we can start talking about eyepatches...or grabbing the melon baller, scooping this thing out and installing the glowing Terminator eye that deep down inside we all really want. (I mean, there's a guy out there that's already done something like it, so the dream is still alive.)

[thehubby]

Look, I had a rough and stressful day at work and while looking for some new anime, I came across this scene from one I've watched partially before, and--look, you don't really care, but this is super funny to me and I could use that tonight and maybe you could too.

[thehubby]

They say laughter is the best medicine, and so I will say that if you ever find yourself cooped up in a hospital you can do a lot worse than a quick subscription to Dropout (Game Changer alone is worth the entry), or if you're more on a budget of free, Letsgameitout on YouTube, which features myriad computer games played purposely wrong and badly with hilarious effect.

[thehubby]

Hey everybody, Mike here with hot goss as they say, straight from the hospital bed. I've been struck by a smooth criminal ischemic stroke of the optic nerve aka damage to the eye resulting from blood flow deprivation. The end result being I have persistent afterimages and distortions in my peripheral vision. But that's where our tale gets juicy, as they've been unable to identify risk factors or causes for it. Cue the tests! Sound like an adventure? It is! But it may not be for everyone, so before signing up, consider carefully.

TOP 8 REASONS TO CONTRACT SPONTANEOUS OPTIC NERVE STROKE

1. You have too much blood but there aren't any local vampires available to help relieve you of it.

2. You need to test to see if your family is poisoning you with heavy metals and the like but want to keep it on the down-low.

3. You're not allowed to change the difficulty level for your job mid-game, so you need to ramp it up by missing days of work (bonus points if you do this during "busy season")

4. You're too addicted to working out and simply cannot take a break unless put into an environment where it's impossible.

5. You really, really have to know if there is unknown metal anywhere in your body, but want a "valid" excuse to go through an MRI.

6. You're afraid of the dark but people make fun of you so you want a nightlight even with your eyes closed in pitch blackness.

7. You've always thought those horror movies where you can't trust your eyes about maybe seeing something move were pretty cool, but are afraid you'll chicken out unless it's irreversible.

8. You need a new pain based experience but just can't convince anyone to give you a lumbar puncture.

If these items sound good to you, and you have an amazing support structure from your family, friends and workplace like I do, then talk to your doctor about inducing Ischemic Stroke of the Optic Nerve today.

Narrator: Do not, in fact, do this.